But anyway, what has happened this year? Well, in a nutshell, I celebrated my 6-year anniversary, almost got divorced, watched Allen find God, watched Allen lose his job again, won my first NC Press award, managed to do two large fundraisers for Jennifer's scholarship, turned 30 and the list goes on and on. I know there's more but I can't think of everything at this point.
I suppose the divorce thing may be shocking to some. I'd like to think Allen and I seemed happy. I guess you get good at pretending. But the bottom line is, we were both miserable and have been for years. It's not that we didn't love each other but our marriage has been a constant battle. We've faced so much; death, in-laws, moving, unemployment, etc., etc. I guess it's hard to be happy when you've been through so much. And I suppose in the end, we blamed each other for our unhappiness.
Truly, I don't know what happened. There's that typical saying, "we grew apart." We did, in ways. But in other ways, we didn't try. We just kept living our life and waiting for things to get better. Instead they got worse and then the one thing I never thought would happen to us did. That's when I said enough is enough.
In the end, neither of us wanted to get divorced. We didn't want to separate. We just wanted to fix it. So, after weeks of talking about ending it, we decided to fix it. We've been together 9 years and neither of us were willing to throw that away without a fight.
So, through everything, the fights, the begging, the crying, we decided that we should allow God into our marriage a little more.
It may sound strange. I've always believed in God. Allen goes to church but has always had his doubts. We just weren't the type of christian, church going family we should have been. So I brought that up during the midst of everything and Allen at first didn't like the idea. In Allen's eyes, God was responsible for everything bad that had ever happened to him and to us. But he began to pray and things began to happen. Our marriage began to get better, one day at a time.
We tried for weeks to get a meeting with our preacher. By the time we were able to meet with him, our marriage was on the mend. The first evening we met with him was the night Allen was saved. It was a strange turn of events. We had went for marriage counseling of sorts and I left with a new husband.
This wasn't one of those things Allen does just because he thinks it's what I want. He really meant it. For the first time in months, I saw Allen cry over the fear that if we both died that day, we would not end up in the same place. He was terrified of not only losing me in life but losing me in death.
There was an immediate change in Allen. He began to pray and he began to read the Bible. Through that, he became a better husband. I became a better wife. On Father's Day, Allen was baptized and became a member of the church we were married in.
It's been several months since that day and things are still not perfect. They probably never will be. But we both have faith now that if we keep trying, we'll be able to fix the love and trust that was broken. But we both know it won't be fixed overnight. But we're trying hard. We're going to church more, praying together and trying to communicate with each other more. Maybe by our seven year anniversary, we'll truly have a lot to celebrate.
So I guess out of everything that happened in 2007, my marriage almost coming to a shocking end and my husband becoming a Christian were the two top things. But, of course, there's still 3 months left in 2010. Who knows what can happen between now and then.
